Pill Bug (aka Woodlice) attack on the strawberries!!!
At this rate we will have no strawberries to eat this year. Time to send in the "hard working" Biological Control Agents (BCAs)!
Was this such a clever idea? Not so sure as they did a lot of damage trampling the strawberries but they really enjoyed themselves .....
But after 48 hours, and having been returned to their coup, had they do their job of controlling the Pill Bugs???? To get an idea we placed potatoes sliced in half, (with the middle scrapped out) and with their cut side down in contact with the soil. This supposedly attracts Pill Bugs and will give us an idea of their population. After 36 hrs we checked the potatoes. And what did we find ....
Loads of Pill Bugs still!!! so much for the BCAs😋
This potato, plus "guests" was quickly placed in the chicken coup where the chooks took an "interest" in the Pill Bugs but were not voracious about it. I very much suspect that if the chooks have a choice between eating crunchy Pill Bugs or lovely red ripe Strawberries they have a distinct preference😉 Can't blame them and great learning experience for us (and family fun chasing after the chooks to relocate them firstly in the Soft Fruit Cage and them back to their coup).
Update.
The day after posting the above I collected more Pill Bugs from the potatoes and placed the Pill Bug in an old ice-cream container and present this to the Chooks in the chicken house. Once again the Chicken were really not interested in eating the Pill Bugs. So my conclusion has to be that Chooks are not effective Pill Bug control agents!
We have now tried to raise the strawberries off the ground to get them physically away from the Pill Bugs with a thick mulch of hay. I will let you know how we get on with this.
